We walk through streets lined with sycamore maples
that do not mourn their lost leaves, as they hold up
the darkened sky. Beneath a crystalline moon,
hydrangea bushes with faded blooms
stand guard and watch our unlikely group:
my starry-eyed younger sister, Mindy, our sturdy father,
my raven-haired friend Lucille, and me, asphalt road underfoot.
Tonight the small stucco homes, the castles
of my childhood, disappear into blackness,
bereft of the warm glow of curtained windows.
We don’t mind loss of light, but take turns grasping
Mindy’s telescope, cool in our hands, to behold a sea of stars,
surfaced when stillness appeared and heaven opened.
Lao Tzu: To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders.

Judith Lee Herbert’s chapbook, Songbird, published by Kelsay Books in 2019, was a finalist in the 2017 Blue Light Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her poems placed in String Poet Contest 2017, the Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Contest 2018, and the LI Poetry and Literature Repository Poetry Contest 2024. Her poems have appeared in publications including Sensitive Skin Magazine, LI Quarterly, These Fragile Lilacs, First Literary Review East, The Ekphrastic Review and in various anthologies.